In the past couple weeks we have seen once again, as if we needed the reminder, that our world is still a dangerous place. The horrific, robotic, random carnage in Aurora, Colo., shook a lot of people.

I think we owe it to ourselves to change our tax structure. Not all of it, at least not all at the same time, but some of it - the parts that arise from our underlying philosophy of how to tax a free people. By their nature taxes cannot be optional.

Last week a rancher in South Texas beat to death a man who was molesting his 4-year old daughter. The responses have been few, fast and widely divergent, and the case raises both interesting questions and interesting paths toward answers.

Late last week the financial world ate a cannonball when JP Morgan Chase & Co., the biggest bank in the United States measured by assets, announced a $2-billion loss in what is being called a failed hedging strategy.